This kind of app may seem like nothing important until you actually use it. I was very skeptical about it but a few months ago I started used f.lux and it really is useful. I use my computer during the night as much I do during the day and it I noticed my eyes and my sleep was being affected. My eyes got tired very fast at night and I wasn't able to fall asleep easily. With f.lux that really changed. I urge every nocturnal computer user to give it a try!
This sounded like a good idea to me when I came across it (I think on HN?) a while ago. The logic makes great sense.
However, what I found was that when I come home late at night and want to work on something, I'm planning to stay up a while. I don't want my screen to go low-contrast and dim, I want to stay up and work! When I'm working late, I expect my computer to stay up with me. It felt like my computer was getting sleepy before I did. Eventually, I removed it.
We have a UI in the works for "night owls"...people love the sunset, so we'll still include it, but we'll have a longer transition for people who want to work late (or who live in northern climates).
I used to use it and love it, but after a while I got tired of the inaccurate color profile in the evenings and realized I was disabling it more often than not. However, if you're just staring at documentation and code, it does wonders for your eyes. (An easy way to check how nice it is is to disable it late at night and feel your retinas come close to combustion)
The bright flash of daylight color temperature when the MacBook Pro's switch graphics cards is the only downside* that I've experienced using f.lux. After you've been using it for a while it's painful to use a computer without it at night.
I found actually confronting the sleep issues I had much better at fixing it. Late day caffeine (you have to stop drinking it by 5 to get it down to a reasonably low level by 12), overly bright bedroom and unpredictable sleep schedule were my issues.
The windows program was great for years (f.lux) though until I did the above.
My co-workers swear by Flux, mainly because they only code. But as the designer in the team, I'd have to disable it every time I'm working on a design.
I actually edit photos even while Flux is on. Eyes are amazing things; mine adjust to the new white balance and I can still judge colors reasonably well (ok, as well as I could before). Of course, these are just photos for Flickr, not for professional work, but when I compare the ones edited with Flux on and with Flux off, I can't tell the difference. In other words, might be worth a try anyway.
Your eyes adapt to the new color temperature very quickly. If you have a good-enough screen and/or you're not working on something with a lot of dynamic in the red spectrum, you should be fine. Even if not, you might still be just fine. I do photo post-processing with flux on and haven't seen a difference in the finished product, same for print and web design work. You get used to flux really quickly.
Been using it for about 3 weeks now, not sure how much of it is placebo effect but noticed a solid improvement on how tired I feel and how easy it is to fall asleep.
I love flux, but unfortunately it doesn't work with my USB monitor adapter[1], so when I try to use it at my desk I get two nicely tinted screens and one normal screen. When I'm just using my laptop on its own it's great!
Just a vote of confidence: I've been using flux for more than a year, and it rocks. Light is critical to sleep cycles and angle and temperature of light is part of that. Flux takes care of temperature for you.
And more than one person has thought they were hallucinating when they saw my screen change temperature, timed to the sunset outside. Extra bonus awesomeness.
Can't adjust brightness? Ubuntu handles my brightness hotkeys and I keep the brightness pretty low anyway. For latenight I also use the compiz hotkey for negative color windows. (It may have to be enabled, and probably won't work on integrated gfx.) It is Win+N and pages go white on black instantly.
I've been using it for sometime (on Mac and Windows). Since I usually code at night when bright light is jarring, it makes coding that much more pleasant.
I just want to say how much I appreciate WakeMate being available to non-US buyers. I've seen a lot of gadgets similar to it that don't ship to the UK and I find that to be a bit of a pain.
I have the same problem he had. Flux just doesn't work on my Ubuntu laptop. It seems to be able to preview correctly, it just never adjusts on its own like it's supposed to. Seems to be a common issue.
In a way. Redshift was made before there was a GUI version of f.lux for linux, in dec. 2009, while I released the linux GUI for f.lux in june 2010. Before both there was just a command line app for f.lux on linux.
I've noticed after a few weeks of using it that I no longer am aware of the screen changing light temperature. I presume that's because I've adapted to it. Anyone else have that?
Once I used it for a complete day I didn't notice. It changes gradually enough that it isn't obvious unless you are thinking about it. Only problem I had was that, at least on Mac (Guns of Icarus), I'd jump into a game and not realize for a while that the color was not right or too dark due to Flux.
The fact that this has so many upvotes would seem to indicate that HN has acquired quite a few new readers since it was last posted, so they probably appreciate it too.
Probably a good tool, but: I would avoid using a computer at all for an hour before going to sleep. For me, reading a book or Kindle is OK, but staring at a laptop screen has a bad effect on my sleep.
I'll give Flux a try however when I absolutely need to power on my laptop before trying to go to sleep.
I really want to like this app, but the Mac version is needlessly crippled.
For example, you can't set the specific time when you want it to start kicking into effect. When it geolocates itself, it hits full effect by 7pm, which is too early for my schedule (I'm staying with a roommate and optimally want to have it kick in around 9 or 10pm so we can both sleep around the same time).
Additionally, the Mac version only has 4 settings for the color temperature (Tungsten, Halogen, Fluorescent, and Daylight), while the Windows version allows you to manually set the exact temperature you want to set as the "maximum."
I am happy to see that F.lux for Mac is still being developed, and the new settings look great, but please allow me to request that the menu bar icon will be changed back to a monochrome one, or at least has a setting for it the same way Dropbox for Mac has.
Thanks for your work. I hope you'll consider my request.
Upvoted. I've been using Flux for several months. I absolutely love it. I am very familiar with the 'turn it off at night and feel your eyes start to burn' effect. But, for the love of god, PLEASE DO NOT clutter up the menubar with an attention-grabbing icon (i.e. one with color).
In addition to restoring a monochrome option, you should also allow users to turn off the menubar icon entirely, and simply rely on the System Preference pane for access on the (very rare) occasions when it's needed.
Just updated - love the slider. 3800k turns out to be the perfect temperature for the room I'm in, so right in-between the old presets for tungsten and fluorescent.
Having the ability to fine tune it like this is really nice.
When I first downloaded the CoverFlow app on a Mac, I said to the person beside me... "Apple will integrate this in iTunes." It wasn't long before Apple bought them out and began sprinkling CoverFlow across everything Apple.
When I first downloaded F.lux I thought the same thing. Here's the next obvious buy.
That they haven't offered you a fat wad of cash to buy your improvement to the iDevices as something you live with in your home suggests to me that Apple is in the process of dropping the ball, when it comes to ergonomics and HI.
This should be baked into Lion. It just should. Thanks.
To use one of these apps one needs a lot of encouragement, so here's some more: I've been using F.lux on all my machines for several months now and I'm very happy with it. Falling asleep after working on a computer is much easier with it.
I only wish something similar was possible on my iPad…
right? is it just me or is the iPad 1 WAY too bright? it never goes above the lowest setting and I constantly find myself checking to see if i can turn it lower. at night it is almost unbearable.
I highly recommend the sepia setting in iBooks and the Kindle reader, which brings the color temperature closer to paper. Just like f.lux, it looks strange at first, but soon the screen looks harsh without it.
However, I'm guessing you're not using one of those apps, because they also have custom full-range brightness controls. The standard control starts at bright and just gets brighter.
I bought them because I had forgotten about flux and I also tend to use my iPhone late at night. I had no idea how much blue light affected my sleep patterns until I started wearing these while I was winding down for the night.
I got laughed at right before our YC W11 interview for my 'sepia-tinted screen'. I live on the east coast, and my clock hadn't changed cause I was still tethering.
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[ 1022 ms ] story [ 3472 ms ] threadHowever, what I found was that when I come home late at night and want to work on something, I'm planning to stay up a while. I don't want my screen to go low-contrast and dim, I want to stay up and work! When I'm working late, I expect my computer to stay up with me. It felt like my computer was getting sleepy before I did. Eventually, I removed it.
Neat idea, just didn't fit my use case.
"why are your colours so messed up?"
"no, it's supposed to be this way at night. Check this out" disable f.lux; the bright flash starts burning our retinas
"woah"
*for non color-critical work
The windows program was great for years (f.lux) though until I did the above.
[1]: http://www.diamondmm.com/BVU195.php
And more than one person has thought they were hallucinating when they saw my screen change temperature, timed to the sunset outside. Extra bonus awesomeness.
It's not Mac-specific - http://stereopsis.com/flux/
A shame, because it works great on my PC and Mac, and when I wake up the Linux PC to do server work at night it feels like my eyes are burning.
http://jonls.dk/redshift/
$0.02
Check out the full story here: http://blog.wakemate.com/2011/03/21/using-electronics-before...
*disclaimer, I'm the author of the gui
I'll give Flux a try however when I absolutely need to power on my laptop before trying to go to sleep.
That said, I reinstalled my system about 4 months ago and never realized that I had neglected to install F.lux until I saw this post.
For example, you can't set the specific time when you want it to start kicking into effect. When it geolocates itself, it hits full effect by 7pm, which is too early for my schedule (I'm staying with a roommate and optimally want to have it kick in around 9 or 10pm so we can both sleep around the same time).
Additionally, the Mac version only has 4 settings for the color temperature (Tungsten, Halogen, Fluorescent, and Daylight), while the Windows version allows you to manually set the exact temperature you want to set as the "maximum."
Thanks for your work. I hope you'll consider my request.
In addition to restoring a monochrome option, you should also allow users to turn off the menubar icon entirely, and simply rely on the System Preference pane for access on the (very rare) occasions when it's needed.
Thanks for your consideration.
Having the ability to fine tune it like this is really nice.
When I first downloaded F.lux I thought the same thing. Here's the next obvious buy.
That they haven't offered you a fat wad of cash to buy your improvement to the iDevices as something you live with in your home suggests to me that Apple is in the process of dropping the ball, when it comes to ergonomics and HI.
This should be baked into Lion. It just should. Thanks.
I ask because on Mac OS X 10.7, I'm getting a wildly different, annoyingly-color, icon:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13236/hosted/color.png
Whereas on the same machine, with the same version, under 10.6, I get:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13236/hosted/normal.png
I only wish something similar was possible on my iPad…
has this been addressed in iPad 2?
However, I'm guessing you're not using one of those apps, because they also have custom full-range brightness controls. The standard control starts at bright and just gets brighter.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000USRG90
I bought them because I had forgotten about flux and I also tend to use my iPhone late at night. I had no idea how much blue light affected my sleep patterns until I started wearing these while I was winding down for the night.
http://www.amazon.com/Venture-Safety-Glasses-Copper-Blue-Blo...